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Warburton is a veteran director who has chaired DuPont Australia and David Jones, and currently chairs the Magellan Flagship Fund.

“There is frustration in the market in general," he says. “One of the biggest mistakes you can make is to react to that."

Warburton will resist pressure from the analysts for some action.

“We will do something for the right reasons, for increased returns, not for the wrong reasons," he says.

Westfield Retail was spun out of Westfield Group late last year with an in specie distribution to investors plus a $2.1 billion raising.

In joint venture with Westfield and nine other partners, it has a $12.2 billion interest in one of world’s best shopping centre portfolios and a capitalisation currently bigger than Stockland.

“We have focused on settling it down, on establishing the processes and structures . . . tedious stuff," Warburton says.

The biggest issue for the first six months was financing – first raising the new equity and then new debt.

Managing director Domenic Panaccio won an A+ credit rating from Standard & Poor’s – the highest in the Australian REIT sector – and the next day raised a $900 million medium-term note issue, the biggest yet seen in the property sector, at a margin of just 120 basis points.

“In terms of cost and volume, it was a great outcome with good support from the market," Panaccio says. He spent 21 years in finance at Foster’s Group before joining Westfield in 2003 to become deputy chief financial officer.

His next challenge is to refine the Westfield Retail direction with a full strategy meeting in the next half.

At the moment Panaccio will not rule out any options, either sales of existing assets or new purchases.

“I would not discount anything. We are still reviewing the portfolio," he says.

But a principle is emerging. Westfield Retail will not be a mere agglomeration of assets.

“Does it meet our hurdles? That is how we would approach it," he says.

Panaccio does not exclude investing in other classes of retail besides regional shopping centres.

“At the moment we invest in high-quality retail and it provides us with a certain return. We would need to understand the increased return for the risk," he says.

Panaccio says that in the current environment, where the cost of debt is higher than the return on prime assets, new acquisitions are prohibitively dilutive.

“At the moment our most compelling investment proposition is to invest in our own properties," he says.

The trust has identified some $1.5 billion worth of redevelopment opportunities on which it expects internal rates of return of 12 to 15 per cent.

Early next year, Panaccio’s challenge is to refinance a $1.3 billion loan for the purchase of the trust’s share in Westfield Sydney.

Even with the trust’s financial grunt, the new interest bill will be higher than the return on assets, stripping the potential for a growth in distribution in 2012.

One other factor weighing on the trust’s pricing is weak retail trading, even though the portfolio is 99 per cent full and still increasing rents.

“Retail is in the doldrums not because of the internet but because of consumer saving," Warburton says.

“There is no doubt the internet will play a larger part but it is coming from a low base."

Westfield Group does not have a stake in Westfield Retail but has a myriad of interconnections.

The board has set up a conflicts committee, not so much to resolve the issues as to prevent them.